Golden era, revisited

In histories of porn, the figure – or, more poetically, the spectre – of a golden age emerges in connection with transformations in porn production, consumption, regulation, and public visibility in the course of the 1970s. As a point of reference, it can be both temporally and geographically vague, and much less so.

This figure generally refers to an era of 35-mm film production and cinema distribution preceding the shift to video in the early 1980s. In an international telling, the era begins with Denmark’s 1969 decriminalization of audiovisual porn, followed by Sweden in 1971, which factually gave rise to legal Scandinavian production at that point operating primarily in print, 8-mm film and Super 8-mm film (Larsson 2016; see also Carter 2023). In a culturally and temporally more specific framing, the golden age represents more of a fleeting moment. The beginning of this might be the on-screen debut and notable success and public visibility of Deep Throat in June 1972 (Damiano, dir. 1972), leading to porno-chic (Bronstein and Strub 2016) as the increased cultural acceptability of porn. The era’s gildedness, again, might begin to grow dimmer, or even come to a close, with the US Supreme Court ruling Miller vs. California the year later, which redefined the notion of obscenity and, in excluding materials deemed obscene from First Amendment protection, afforded greater freedom in prosecution. While hardly marking the end of 1970s screen porn in the USA, the ruling involved a shift in its mainstreaming and sociocultural positioning.

Although marking a shift from public screening to home consumption, and from cinematic production practices to those of straight to video, ‘goldness’ in this periodization also positions the medium of film itself as a marker of value, interest, or importance. In other words, whether one discusses the artistic merits of The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Metzger, dir. 1976) or debates the inclusion of Super 8-mm films or experimental films (such as Warhol’s Blue Movie) in the periodization of the golden era, the emphasis tends to be on moving image culture and its possibly auteur-like creators (Paasonen and Saarenmaa 2007). This audiovisual emphasis is similar (albeit hardly identical) to the current tendency to equate the notion of porn with the format of a video clip. It is also the case that this periodization tends to focus on developments specific to the USA; its production histories, stars, directors, legal framework, and media coverage. This tendency owes both to the overall international visibility of US production since the 1970s and to the chosen perspectives of scholars, journalists, and essayists probing porn historiography.

This Special Forum builds on the question of how the ‘golden era’ might look, and what it might encompass, when addressing pornographic cultures outside the USA. What happened in the course of the 1970s; how have things become remembered; what do we know in the light of archival sources and extant inquiry? In a country such as Turkey? Sweden? The UK? These are no minor questions, considering how under-studied and undocumented local porn histories remain, and how little of them may be known through extant archival materials, the availability of which vary drastically across national contexts while nevertheless forming the backbone for historical inquiry (for example, Gellatly 1981; Mercer 2014; Shanley 2014; Squires 2014). Of the Special Forum pieces published here, Will Straw’s exploration of Quebecois periodicals, sourced from second-hand sellers and lacking contextual data as per publishers, vendors, editors, or even years of publication, represents something of the polar opposite in terms of archical accessibility to Susanna Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa’s overview of Finnish sex magazines in circulation in 1972–1973, accessed through a public depositary library at the authors’ home institution, and assisted by publication metadata (see also Larsson 2022; Paasonen and Saarenmaa 2023).

It is an international tendency to exclude films, videos, and periodicals classified as porn (or obscenity) from public archives; this is more of a norm than an exception. Combined with divergent practices of historically removing such content from the public eye, this results in a culture-historical effacement, or a cleansing of sorts, so that it can be near impossible to know what was published or by whom, how local distribution or international circulation took place, or how broadly pornographic media objects were consumed.

Given the lack of available archival material in more institutional settings, it is common enough for screen studies scholars to turn to porn video aggregation platforms which, as archives without a curator (Gehl 2009), come with varying degrees of metadata necessary for historical inquiry: there may be some, or then not; they may be accurate, or much less so. A video may be there, but the metadata may not be – in fact, these metadata may not be anywhere to be found. Such ephemerality underpins Ihsan Can Asman’s article on Turkish ‘sex influx’ films enjoying a lively afterlife on tube sites while remaining opaque in their production data.

The five Special Forum pieces in this issue take closer look at forgotten formats, national production contexts and subgenres, as well as political campaigns. While shedding light on local porn histories, these also speak to how pornography is understood and how it continues to be regulated and debated today. We use the figure of a golden era as a framing device for thinking about 1970s porn histories in national and regional contexts beyond the USA, and expand our focus from film to print cultures, which, for the most part, remained much more ample and accessible than audiovisual porn so as to form something of a vernacular basis for porn consumption internationally.

Oliver Carter’s article accounts for the 1971 ‘porn panic’ in the UK provoked by the labour politician Frank Pakenham, better known as Lord Longford. Longford raised concerns about pornography in the House of Lords and called for detailed investigation on the porn business in the country, the press following the process with both support and mockery. The results of the investigation were published as a 500-page book, the so-called Longford Report. Despite all his efforts, Longford failed to find sociological and statistical support for his claims about the damaging effects of pornography.

Focusing on the years 1972–1973, Susanna Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa both catalogue the sex magazines produced in Finland during the period and consider the impact of more lenient interpretations of obscenity legislation. As periodicals grew more hardcore, small publishers went under and the market became controlled by two rivalling players, one of whom specialized on locally sourced content and another traded in imported materials. The article further enquires after the presence of sex and porn films in the magazines in a national context marked by strict film censorship.

During the Turkish ‘golden era’, dated around the years 1974–1980, some of the country’s most prominent mainstream filmmakers were involved in the flourishing sex influx (softcore film) business. Drawing on debates and testimonies concerning sex influx, Ihsan Can Asman explores the legacies of this period, asking how these films have reappeared in contemporary Turkish popular memory, how the materials are revisited today, and what these histories tell of the gendered and sexual politics in the country.

Using Inge Ivarson, a Swedish quality porn producer, as her example, Mariah Larsson argues that, despite the critiques squared against the concept of ‘golden age’, it can be useful in addressing national specificities in the 1970s. Drawing on Ivarson’s legacy, Larsson questions the simple juxtaposition of highbrow and lowbrow culture, and commercial and artistic interests in porn production. Ivarson’s films were notable commercial successes, yet relied on classic literary adaptations, an ensemble of stars, and skilful cinematographic craftsmanship.

Finally, Will Straw discusses sexually explicit content in tabloid format as something overlooked in extant studies of both print culture and pornography in Quebec. This is a line of production nowadays met in flea markets, charity book sales, and internet marketplaces, hidden in the basements and surviving (or not) because of its perceived lack of value. Straw nevertheless concludes that the widespread sexualization of tabloids in the late 1960s represents a key development in local porn history.

Taken together, these five articles are much less interested in verifying the existence of golden eras here, there, or anywhere than in zooming in on local developments and materials produced some 50 years ago. We are further concerned with the methodological challenges involved in accessing and making sense of such materials so as to advance porn historiography internationally.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.